Friday, January 28, 2011

Quick update, since I know you've all been agonizing over the status of my latest round of winter illness. :) After basically 2 weeks of feeling crummy, I finally felt good enough yesterday to go play volleyball. Hoping to get back to the exercise room at work tonight as well after two weeks away. Not that I've been bed-ridden or anything. Just sore throat/congestion/coughing. Still haven't kicked the cough yet, but I've at least stopped going through cough drops at an alarming rate, and I've been able to sleep my regular 8 hours which helps a lot too. And I would probably stop taking decongestant, except for an experience I had with my last cold back around Christmas time.

I was recovering from being sick and thought I was getting better, so I stopped taking medicine and then somehow managed to end up with congestion-related jaw pain. I assumed that something bad had happened to my teeth. Seriously, I couldn't even feel my molars coming together on the left side. Biting down would make me wince. Was thinking about making an appointment with my dentist for about a week. Then I mentioned it to my home teacher, and he asked if I'd been sick lately. He suggested that my congestion could have "settled" in my jaw in a way that was causing the problem. This definitely came as a shock to me. Had never even heard of that possibility, much less experienced anything like that before. I knew that inflamed sinuses could cause tooth pain in the top teeth where the teeth roots are right next to the sinus cavity. But this was way back by my jaw muscles. Anyway, on his urging, I took some decongestant that night and saw almost immediately, significant improvement in my situation. A few days of that and my jaw was back to normal. Who knew?

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

As I mentioned last post, I'm currently in the midst of my 3rd head cold this winter. Sore throat, mild cough, lots of *stuff* filling up my nose and throat. And yet its not so bad that I feel like staying home from work and using my hard earned time off just because I'm feeling mildly crappy. I'm still going about my days pretty much as usual, except that I'm not exercising, and I'm trying to get to bed earlier than usual. Last night I was in bed right around 10, thinking I could get at least a good 9 hours. But no. At 6:00 this morning I was suddenly wide awake, and despite laying in bed for another 20 minutes, couldn't get back to sleep. I had a similar experience on Saturday morning, though not quite as early, thankfully. Only 8:00 that time. I'm thinking that maybe 8 hours of sleep is the maximum length that my airways can go without getting completely gunked up with nastiness, and at that point, my body forces me to wake up so that it can go about the business of clearing things out. And trust me, there's a lot of clearing out that happens as I go about getting ready for my day. (TMI?)

Anyway, on top of being tired of being sick, I've also discovered that the cold medicine I've taken for the last some-odd years, Tylenol Cold, is apparently no longer sold (at least not at Wal-mart, Smiths, or Fresh Market). So I've had to settle for a variety of others: DayQuil, generic-looking equate, Alka-Seltzer cold (seriously?), none of which seems to really do the job quite like good old Tylenol. Of course, I only switched to Tylenol when Triaminicin was no longer on the market (Relief from cold symptoms apparently is not as important as mildly reduced risk of brain hemorrhages). But I digress. Part of the reason I dislike these other cold remedies is that instead of relatively small capsules that Tylenol came in, these (Dayquil and Alka-Seltzer at least) come in relatively ginormous gelcaps. I can understand that some people like gelcaps because they're gentler on the tummy, but when I have a sore throat and swallowing hurts like a bugger, the last thing I want to choke down is a horsepill-sized cold remedy. The manufacturers realize that people take these for sore throat relief, right?

Anyway, here's to hoping that this cold will go away soon and I can get back to oversleeping. :)

Friday, January 14, 2011

Written while suffering through what I think is the third cold I've had this winter. My roommates need to stop getting sick...anyway

So I'm planning on going tubing up at Soldier Hollow tonight with my ward (and probably a bunch of other people) so yesterday before work and after work I spent probably close to an hour searching for my snow gloves. (I have some light, non-waterproof gloves that I keep handy for regular use, but they aren't so great for playing in the snow). I knew I owned them, and I was pretty sure they'd made it to my new place when I moved almost 2 years ago, but I wasn't sure I'd used them since the move. (Last time I used them was probably the last time I went tubing.) Anyway, my first guess was that they'd be on the shelf in my closet. So I drug my chair over there and grabbed a flashlight and started digging through everything up there. No luck.

I did, however, find half a bag of new socks, which was perfect timing since just this week I was thinking I would need to buy some new socks to keep on a solid once-every-two-weeks laundry schedule. Exercising 5 times in the last 2 weeks was apparently too much of a demand on my sock supply. But not anymore. :) In searching the rest of my room, I also found a pair that had fallen between my bed and my dresser at some point. Probably when I was folding laundry on my bed sometime.

After that, I journeyed down to the storage room in the basement to see if any of the boxes there seemed like places I might have packed my gloves. Hmm...not really. I check the few that seemed at least plausible, but with no luck. I was about ready to give up on remembering where I'd left them and wondering how much it would cost to buy new ones, or if I could find someone to loan me some. My final thought was, "If I were Jake, where would I put my snow gloves?" and I suddenly realized that I would probably keep them with the ski jacket that I only wear when I'm out playing in the snow. (My regular coat is pretty good usually, but not as great for actually being IN the snow.) So I dug into the nether regions of my closet where the ski coat lives and lo and behold there were my gloves, clipped neatly to the zipper on the jacket. So pretty much, if I would have just waited until tonight when I was gathering up my stuff, I totally would have found them before knowing I didn't know where they were. :)

It struck me as humorous that while my memory totally failed me, I was able to figure out where they probably were by just pretending I was me and asking where I would have put them. I'm glad that I'm still able to understand my own thought processes. :)